


coming back as we are

by idlesong



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Daydreaming, Domestic Bliss, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Moving In Together, Romance, it's 98 percent fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 22:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlesong/pseuds/idlesong
Summary: This story branches into that, one memory of him interrupts another. They stack themselves into a tower that threatens to wobble. Johnny would never pause for anything, as much as he lived in his memories, because this, right now, being with him, would never cease to be the best moment of all.





	coming back as we are

**Author's Note:**

> the structure of this is a lil unconventional—along the lines of stream of consciousness because woolf has been on my mind lately. i’m stretching my angst-writing muscles once more, although this is 95% fluff. this is for [jess](https://twitter.com/seoxuxis) even though she certainly didn’t ask for it to be this way. thanks @ the_scientist_coldplay.mp3 for the inspiration and a sincere thank you/apology to jess for this whether you enjoy it or not. (^:

“Will you leave me if I’m hurting you more than I’m loving you?” Ten asks, abruptly, because it’s how he does most things. He kicks doors open for fun, squawks when he’s bored, wriggles around over the covers if Johnny’s gotten up first to get ready. 

They’ve been in this position for forty minutes, Ten’s head in Johnny’s lap as the latter flips languidly through the pages of a book he’s been trying to finish for years. It’s difficult to focus on the black on white, the meticulously chosen words describing the fictional, when Ten is doing nothing but staring off into space and thinking. Observing that alone is endlessly more interesting.

It’s sudden; Ten’s words are an unexpected interjection into their silence. The whir of the refrigerator coupled with his soft inhales and exhales had created a tranquil construction of a perfect Sunday. In the lull of having no urgent responsibilities, they piled themselves atop each other below their thick duvet, having been washed the night before so that Johnny woke up to the scent of clean linen and the comforting redolence of their shared bed. 

The scent of home, strongest when Johnny noses between Ten’s neck and shoulder, arms wrapped around his waist until neither of them could ignore their rumbling stomachs any longer.

The late mornings are the best.

“Is everything okay?” Johnny glances down at him quizzically, setting his book down in a way that Ten always frets will stretch the spine. His voice is low, still a little gruff due to the very last remnants of a cold from which he recently recovered. 

Ten had been in a mode of hyper-doting those past four days, bringing to Johnny rice porridge he had picked up on the way home from work and brewing him warm teas whenever his mug went empty. The warm towel folded across Johnny’s forehead was habitually changed whenever it grew even the slightest bit cold. 

Ten had been asleep, his head bent between his folded arms in the same fashion as a hospital patient’s bedside visitor, when Johnny’s fever broke.

“This wasn’t what was supposed to happen,” Ten complained the morning after, their positions switched as Johnny poured him a full mug of steaming tea. “I only took care of you so you could kiss me again.” The covers were pulled up to his chin, a scene reminiscent of sick days in both their childhoods, anecdotes recounted between both of them on slow evenings during which they did nothing but talk. 

“I’m sorry, I’ll kiss you lots as soon as you get better,” Johnny said, pressing his lips to Ten’s sweaty brow, an act that only partially compensated for his disappointment.

“Do you need anything more?” Johnny asked, to which Ten shook his head. 

“I know you can’t kiss me on the lips so no,” Ten replied with his usual expression of distaste, the scrunch of his nose that Johnny had grown to find endearing. It was hardly the first time he had seen him wear the look of being unimpressed.

Ten had never been one to hide how he felt. Johnny knew from the first day they had sat four seats apart in their sociology lecture. Four seats because it was a much bigger classroom than needed for their number of enrolled students, because who had the time for an 8-10 p.m lecture? 

(Johnny did. Johnny would have rather died than make the 8 a.m, and it’s not like he lived far from the barren lecture hall either. It had also become routine for him and Jaehyun to grab steamed dumplings on their walk back to residence, so the entire occasion was often made worth it.)

But there again was that expression to which he had grown somewhat familiar, making the other student’s face contort unflatteringly. Johnny had never thought much of him, considering the sparsity of the class never really made him think of anyone else but Jaehyun who sat right beside him. The prospect of a project having to be done in pairs was what spurred that strange expression, Johnny supposed, but he hardly felt the same way. 

With approximate gestures of her hand, the professor was assigning partners in order of how they sat along the rows of seats. Working with Jaehyun would be fine, he thought, already thinking of how they would divide the work. It took him a moment to recognize that Jaehyun was already sliding into a chair a few seats away, the professor having paired him with another student rather than Johnny.

Johnny turned his head to the left, trying not to frown. It wasn’t that he disliked the prospect of having to work with a stranger, but it would have been far more convenient if he could work with Jaehyun instead. Now this project would include the obstacle of getting to know someone, going out of his way to meet up with them in order to work on it, and all for what? A person he could go to exchange a half-hearted “hey, how are you” with for the rest of the semester before they effectively parted ways forever? What a hassle. 

With the smile that Johnny had perfected to be as cordial as it was amiable, he pushed his laptop towards his partner and said hello. Instead of saying it back, the other student looked at Johnny’s screen with some amusement before turning his gaze to him. Johnny wasn’t sure when he had inadvertently switched back to his paused episode of _Drag Race,_ but he hadn’t been intending to have it be apart of his first impression on his project partner.

It turned out to be a favourite of Ten’s too, for which Johnny was glad, because from thereon he could stop pestering Jaehyun with discussions of who had the best runway when the younger had never, would never have any interest in the topic. Ten was quick to send a link to stream the new episode as soon as it went up, but they found themselves squeezed together on Johnny’s tiny bed to watch it together every Thursday night.

The habit became one of many that Johnny picked up adjacent to Ten, all of the small routines branching from Ten himself. The first time they had spent time together without a real purpose was when Johnny had asked what Ten would be up to that day to be told that the latter was working on a paper at the library.

_would it be ok if i just came and read next to you?_ Johnny had texted him after five minutes of deliberation. _i just need to get out of my house. i’ll bring you a coffee if you want._

They were both quite the loud people when they wanted to be, he had previously learned in the few times they spent together. Their voices rose to high volumes when they grew impassioned about the lip syncing figures on the laptop screen, to the point where Jaehyun had stuck his head through the doorframe to politely tell them to pipe down.

Johnny was surprised to find that he enjoyed the comfortable silence with Ten as well, the warm smile and squeeze of hand with which Ten greeted him when Johnny showed up with two iced Americanos. The hurried hushed apology Ten gave him when he spilled some of Johnny’s while trying to remove it from the travel tray had merely made Johnny laugh breathily. 

Ten’s clumsy hands were another thing to which Johnny grew accustomed, the ones that would run through his hair when they kissed for the first time, Johnny’s arms wrapped tight around his waist. Both of them could feel the music pounding to its own rhythm against the wall, the sensation of their own rushing heartbeats syncopating anything produced by the muffled melody.

“I’ve been waiting,” Ten mumbled, fingers still tangled in Johnny’s hair—a ring or two to be caught in it throughout the course of the night, a recurring occasion over the next few years. “For two months.”

“You could have kissed me first,” Johnny refuted, although the argument hardly seemed important when it only mattered that they were kissing right then. The time that had gone by in the meantime didn’t seem to be a factor when they had found their way. “I was looking for the right time.”

“There were plenty of right times,” Ten continued on when Johnny turned his attention, and his lips, to the crook of Ten’s neck, the angle awkward due to their height difference and the adrenaline coursing through his body telling him to keep on. “At the library, at your place, three hours ago…”

“I needed to work up the courage. It involved a shot or two,” Johnny said lowly, and his teeth sunk into a spot below Ten’s collarbone that made him shiver. It had been the first time Johnny’s ever heard Ten make that sound, and he resolved just then that if he ever gets to redo his life he’ll kiss Ten earlier to hear it sooner.

They fit together clumsily. It has to do with how they can’t do much but stand in the cramped bathroom, their only option for privacy in Taeyong’s first-ever apartment. The housewarming party had been a strange affair, trying to fit people into a space that was longer than it was wide. It ended up with conversations being held closer in proximity than most would choose, red cups pressed against each other while small talk was exchanged.

A fist pounded against the wooden door, off-step with the other pulsations of the music and heartbeats and heavy breaths contained within the small bathroom. “Please not my bathroom,” Taeyong pleaded from the other side. “I _just_ cleaned it.”

Ten snorted at that, leading Johnny out of the space for their friend’s peace of mind. “We could have just kept making out,” Johnny mumbled, fingers fumbling to interlock with Ten’s for the first time. That their hands were laughably different in size was his first observation, but his second and most important was that the determination with which his hand was held was one he wanted to possess himself.

There were times when Johnny feared he was too compliant with how the world moved around him, too willing to accept the circumstances if they seemed unchangeable and unwilling to look for another way out if it seemed like the alternative was too big of a risk. 

Ten was the opposite. He searched for tunnels within tunnels, one decision that split into others. There were no straight paths for him, no means of coasting through when there was no hurdle too large to not attempt jumping.

Despite the differences their fights never lasted long, more often a culmination of a mutually bad day and one mishap that would land them both in a passive-aggressive dinner conversation they later rectified over mugs of hot tea. 

When Johnny was half a year into his first job post-undergrad, the one whose interview made him feel like a giant baby in a pinstripe suit and buffed shoes (à la Ten), there was no room for his love, he thought. The trying methods of achieving balance tugged at both sides of him until he felt close to snapping.

Ten stopped him before he got all the way there, able to recognize the talk that had been coming their way weeks earlier than Johnny. “Are you not interested in seeing me or do you think you don’t have enough time?” Ten asked, arms folded across his chest.

Johnny’s lips pressed into a thin line, speechless at the implication Ten presented so bluntly. “I would never…I’m not planning to…” he trailed off, the tie around his collar feeling even tighter than it had been during the interview. “It’s so hard to not be without you all the time. And it’s not like I’m in the position to ask you to move with me.”

“Why not?” Ten challenged him. The question gave Johnny pause, if only to think about it himself. There it was, the push onto the path that Johnny never considered himself. An assertive nature was one thing but innovation was never his strongest suit. Yes, why not, he thought, taking a few steps forward to hold Ten’s hands in his and nodding.

“Let’s move in together,” Johnny said, the words coming easily. They were hidden in the crevices of his mind Ten had managed to get into long ago. He would never leave them, Johnny hoped, if it meant there was always opportunity for them to take refuge there together. Those deep, deep corners of his thoughts in which Ten was welcome to reside.

Their move into a physical home was initially a hassle, one lazy friend after another politely brushing off any cries for help during the carrying of material items. Johnny, piling things into his car, resentfully recalled the same ache in his back when he had spent the entire day lifting boxes into Taeyong’s test tube of an apartment. 

Too tired to accomplish it all, Ten declared, whilst making their shared bed for the first time, that they should call it a day, eat ramen for dinner on the floor, and go to sleep.

Johnny agreed, already rooting through their kitchen supplies to find the kettle. One of the outlets in the living room was defective, they were aware, planning on repairing it after they had settled in. 

“Was it this one?” Johnny asked, plugging in the electronic base with some caution. The light on the handle of the boiler flickered, a cue for Ten to retrieve the meagre portions of nonperishable food. A survey of both fridges at their previous places of residence seemed pointless—it was clear that neither of them were competent at keeping them well-stocked. That would go on to change, starting from the very next day. 

In the meantime they remained as they were, content in a brief regression to being broke college students eating cup noodles on their floor, relieved their new home wasn’t carpeted when Ten managed to spill some of his soup a total of six times. 

“We should probably figure out which outlet’s faulty,” Ten said as they were cleaning up, Johnny’s attention momentarily distracted from the bowls being rinsed in the sink.

“Try plugging in your phone charger,” Johnny suggested, wiping his hands clean on the first of several dishtowels his mom had gotten them as a housewarming gift. Instead of heeding his advice, Ten was gliding the boxcutter along his most precious container, the one he had been hunched over the previous day to write “fragile” on every face of the cardboard cube.

The movements with which he removed the record player from its confines were meticulous, careful to not disturb it in any way as he set it down on the ground and reached inside the box once more to find its cords.

“What are you doing?” Johnny asked, returning to sit crosslegged next to him.

“Could you get the Billie Holiday record?” Ten responded, toeing the boxcutter in the other man’s direction before gesturing to another box. The vinyl had most often been seen by Johnny while it spun slowly, the fuzzy euphoria-inducing white noise, something so familiar yet hardly noticeable with how much he had heard her voice croon in its beautiful fashions. 

Johnny thought about how he had never seen the disc in its sleeve, its default position almost always underneath the glass cover of Ten’s most beloved phonograph. It had never really been Johnny’s thing, his preference for listening locked entirely on a trusty pair of headphones and a stacked playlist, but he had come to appreciate this, this additional sense of home attributed to Ten.

When the record began to spin, Ten was relieved to see it worked, as though the entire operation would have gone kaput if this outlet had turned out to be the broken one. Johnny held his hand out to him, brought them both to their feet. They danced slowly, took turns clumsily twirling each other as laughter erupted from their shaking chests.

Johnny had his hands and lips pressed to Ten’s shoulders and forehead respectively shortly after Taeyong’s sister had invited the rest of her wedding guests to the dance floor. The bright pink bowties adorned at their collars had made Taeyong laugh and ask whether it was Ten’s idea when the answer went without saying. Ten beamed in pride anyway, had fixed it around Johnny’s neck when it went crooked while they had been getting out the door.

The song that played as they danced was one Johnny never got the name of. He went on to wonder if it was an original of the band’s because he never once encountered it again in his life. Still, he could hum how it went, the hook never leaving his mind because it was an essential part of the recollection. It was the moment when Ten laughed, his fringe slightly sticking to his forehead after their time on the dance floor, the warm lights on their black jackets having given them an even greater humid quality.

This was the moment when Johnny knew he wanted this forever, was sure that he needed Ten forever. It had become an unchangeable factor of his life. Ten was as constant as the music he listened to daily, the glass of water he needed before bed, the curve of his eyes when he smiled. Wherever his mind wandered, far further into time than usually manageable, he saw Ten there too. He had yet to say it out loud, but he knew it to be true. 

He could see them moving into a large place, maybe even a house one day. If they didn’t have a backyard, Johnny would still be content if the neighbourhood settled into enough calmness in the evenings so he and Ten could walk the dog they sometimes fantasized about adopting, one that would curl up between them while Johnny read and Ten napped with his head in his lap.

There’s a child in his future too, a blurry enough figure that he almost fears to acknowledge because it seems like such a large responsibility, one of the biggest choices in their future. Although he tried not to dwell on the idea too much, at least not before he brought it up to Ten himself, there was still something endlessly exciting about it. 

The mere idea of having a child, maybe children, that they would raise together, treat with so much love and care. Johnny practically dissolves at the idea of having children, getting to see them grow up with as much adoration that he and Ten show each other. 

The rest of the hypotheticals dulled out when he thought of Ten himself, his head still resting in his lap. They would grow old together and forever still may not seem like enough. Johnny could feel nothing but a full heart when Ten was in his arms. Especially on mornings like these. 

The late mornings are the best.

“Babe?” Ten’s voice is soft, pierces sharply into Johnny’s reverie—or several—but he didn’t mind in the least. Johnny smiles at him as Ten lifts his upper body to sit properly, gently retracts his smaller frame from Johnny’s arms that would never let him go. Ten’s eyes are wet, Johnny now notices, and for the first time since he’s met him, he wishes this moment would stop.

“What is it?” Johnny asks, taking his lover’s hands, the grasp met with some reluctance.

Ten’s lips, stretched into an uneasy smile, quiver as his eyes bore into Johnny’s. The gaze is pleading, but Johnny couldn’t understand what to offer. He thinks he’s already given everything he can. If there’s more to give, he would be happy to relinquish it.

 The future, they would be happy in the future too. Johnny would only ever get lost in his memories because of how they led into tomorrow. He cherishes every moment with Ten in its presence, in what it is. Nothing else needed to bleed into right now.

“The doctor called yesterday…”

Johnny wants to return to any other time. It could be any one, one during which they were momentarily unhappy, when they were fighting even, it could even be a time before they knew each other. It could be any moment to which they could return, as long as it would delay this one. 

His hold on Ten’s hands tighten. He has the sudden realization that he would eventually be looking back on this too, wouldn’t he? He would be reminiscing on this moment, and the same fondness with which he looks back on every previous memory could be effaced by what was about to occur. 

“No…” Johnny whimpers, shaking his head. He realizes something else. 

Ten wasn’t asking him if he would leave, but telling him he should. 

“I’m…”

He didn’t want to be the one to have to go.

**Author's Note:**

> @johnten group chat: [sorry](https://i.imgur.com/4VjIjdl.jpg) but i adore youuu ♡


End file.
